A Christmas Package from Stealing Home

I feel bad for not posting about this package earlier. It arrived right in the middle of my Cyber Week breaks. Stealing Home from the All Trade Bait, All The Time blog sent out a bunch of Christmas packages in December, and I was one of the lucky recipients of a bubble mailer full of baseball cards. He hit on several of my player and team collections.

I was happy to see a bunch of Randy Johnson cards in this package. The Big Unit just seemed like such an intense and dominating guy on the field. I really should pursue more of his cardboard. There are also a couple of Astros pitchers here, one maybe a little more well-known than the other. Goose Gossage also makes an appearance here, with a Topps Archives issue. 

Next up are some more Astros and some Athletics from a variety of years and card brands. I was primarily a basketball collector during my teen years in the 90's, so most baseball cards from earlier than 2012 or so are going to be new to my collection.

Following the Astros and A's, we have some Blue Jays content and a couple of guys with impressive mustaches. For a second I was confused as to why Franco and Aase made it into the package, but then I noticed that they are both sporting some impressive lip fur.

Closing things out are a couple of horizontal cards, a Heritage card celebrating the Astros, who would go on to win the World Series, and the other showing Eddie Murray at different points in his career, but always sporting an impressive caterpillar under his nose.

Thanks for the fun card package, Stealing Home! I had a great Christmas, and I hope that you did too!

At the Trade Deadline 47: The Prowling Cat Cleans Out His Clutter, and I'm Reaping All the Benefits, Part 7

Here is the final item included in The Prowling Cat's recent closet-cleaning package. It's a set of 1984 Ralston Purina trading cards produced by Topps and distributed in cereal boxes. I remember Ralston Purina baseball cards, but this set is a bit early for me as I turned 3 years old right at the end of 1983. The slightly later airbrushed Post cards fit more into the years when I became aware of trading cards.

Dan Quisenberry is sporting quite the lip tickler in this photo, as well as a big healthy dip in his cheek. I've never liked chewing tobacco, but I've spent a lot of time with people who do during my time in the military and working in freight. There is one guy in particular who comes to mind because he had a small chin and a small mouth, so his wad of chew was always threatening to escape. He had this habit of slurping it back in while wiping his chin with his finger while he talked. It was disgusting, and I always thought it was kind of unprofessional to be a grown-ass man with a pretty constant line of drool running down your chin.

This is a pretty decent lineup of baseball card photos. Although there are exceptions, many of the players don't seem too pleased to be having their pictures taken. The set calls itself the 1st Annual Collectors' Edition, but the only other Ralston Purina set I can locate is a 1987 release. Those cards wisely dropped the word 'annual' from their tagline.

This grouping of cards features a few more smiles than the last batch, but there are still a few mean-muggers here, including Wade Boggs, who once glared so hard at a cinder-block wall that the wall moved several feet to the side to let him pass. It's nice to see Nolan Ryan in those Astros rainbow colors, but the shot is zoomed in so far that you don't get the full effect.

Here are some more nice shots. There is plenty of facial hair on display, with the standout for me being Bruce Sutter's magnificent beard. One thing that stood out to me about this set was how sweaty a lot of the players' faces are. It's like these photos were taken in the very hottest part of summer. A lot of the guys are sporting some pretty nice tans / sunburns, so maybe I'm not too far off.

Gary Carter is probably the most egregious example of face sweat in the set, as in-hand you can actually see it running down to the side of his nose. In that building behind Keith Hernandez you car barely make out the silhouette of the second spitter as he makes his way down to the bushes near the gravelly road.

There was a ton of cool cardboard in this package from The Prowling Cat. I had a lot of fun flipping through it and becoming a little more familiar with food issues from the time just before I discovered trading cards.

Josh Reddick 2013 Panini America's Pastime Impact Ink Red # 4 / 5

I am in Arkansas for work for a couple of days and the internet here isn't the fastest thing in the world, so I haven't been able to keep up on writing posts. I will try to post a couple of times while I'm gone, but they'll probably be short one-card deals like this one. This particular card have been sitting in my draft queue for a long time. There isn't really any reason for that. I just haven't had anything to say about it.

I still don't have a lot to say about it. It comes from 2013 Panini America's Pastime Baseball and features a sticker autograph of Josh Reddick, one of my PC players. This is the Red parallel of the Impact Ink autograph set and is numbered # 4 / 5. Last year I picked up the base # / 25 version of this card. Jumping back and forth between the scans on my computer I can't actually find a difference between the cards outside of the serial numbering. Maybe the foil is a different color and I just can't see it in the scan? I don't know. There might be dumber things out there than parallels that aren't different from each other, but I'm not sure what that might be. Anyway, it's another autograph of a PC guy and I am happy to have it in my collection.

What eBay Hath Wrought 125: An eBay 1 / 1 Josh Reddick Autograph

I haven't had a Josh Reddick card on here since the first of the month, 

so I thought I would post one I picked up a little while ago. It's an Impact Ink autograph from 2013 Panini America's Pastime. It's a sticker auto, and you can see that the ink is smudged a bit on the 'R' in Reddick, but the asking price was pretty low. It is serially-numbered # 16 / 25, which makes it a "RARE EBAY 1 / 1 PLAYER'S JERSEY NUMBER!!!" card. It's got some decent beard action on it, and since the player picture is tiny and in black-and-white you can hardly notice that there are no MLB logos on it. I guess I am somewhat moving away from my no-Panini bias, as there are a lot of cards out there and they offer something a little different from what Topps churns out. I still wish the major sports leagues would open things up and issue licenses to multiple companies. I think it would open up innovation to have card companies compete on an even level in each sport.

Reddick played in about 2/3 of the A's games this year, and I was surprised to see that he managed 3.5 WAR (Wins Above Replacement) this season. I guess it felt to me like he had kind of a down year, but the numbers seem to say otherwise. He did have a few highlights this year, including some wall-climbing catches and the memorable use of Careless Whisper as his walk-up music for a few games early in the season. The five home runs mentioned on the back of this card would make up nearly half of his homers for the season, as he finished 2013 with twelve.

What eBay Hath Wrought 123: Hulk Hogan Peck & Snyder Throwback

I don't know much about Peck & Snyder, but the internet tells me they were an early sporting goods company that is credited with creating the first recognized set of baseball cards in the wayback times. So naturally someone decided to bring them back. I guess a full-on Peck & Snyder product will be released soon, but Leaf Trading Cards sent out a promotional set to dealers as a preview. There are 45 cards in the set, featuring stars from various areas of sport. They all appear to be unlicensed, so you're not going to see a lot of logos or actual team/organization names. So in this case Hulk Hogan's affiliation is merely the Wrestling Club of Georgia rather than the WWF/WWE or WCW or something. The rumor is that about 250 sets were produced.

I waffled back and forth on whether to order a set or just to cherry-pick the Hulk Hogan card. In the end I just decided to grab the Hulkster for my collection. The cards are a little bit longer lengthwise and a little bit thinner widthwise than a standard trading card. This supposedly mirrors the dimensions of the originals. The photos have a sepia filter applied to them, which I think is okay, but they have also been chipped and weathered to artificially age the photos. It's an okay idea, but in the execution of it I just find it a little annoying. I would rather have the clear photos with the sepia filter applied.

The back of the card is pretty plain, featuring some more made-up stuff about the Peck & Snyder Company, a mention of Leaf, and a logo dude in a tall hat. I imagine that when the actual set comes around there might be a little bio on the back or maybe variations of color or design as is the norm with the various tobacco throwbacks out there. As a promotional item this is a pretty cool set, but I don't know if I would go out and buy packs of the stuff unless there was something beyond the base set compelling enough to reel me in.

What eBay Hath Wrought 47: Hulkamania Runs Wild on Me

In 2013 Upper Deck made an employee-exclusive set of purple Precious Metal Gems cards featuring some stars from non-mainstream sports. The checklist includes Michael Phelps, Mike Tyson, Oscar de la Hoya, Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods, and Hulk Hogan. The one card I really wanted was the Hulk Hogan card, but especially when they first released the price was sky-high. They're numbered out of # / 125.

Well, the number of single copies on eBay pretty much dried up, but there was this lot of four copies on there for quite a while. I finally decided to go ahead and get it, with the plan to sell off three copies individually to make some of the money back. I haven't yet got around to that part of it yet, but I'll probably do it soon. In-hand they are very shiny and beautiful. I love this card. This lot is made up of copies # 043 / 125. # 084 / 125, # 102 / 125, and # 103 / 125. I need to find more Metal Universe cards. Something about the finish on the Metal sets just has that 'it' factor for me.

At the Trade Deadline 15: Sportscards From The Dollar Store

I completed a trade with Sportscards From The Dollar Store. Actually, as of my typing this out on the 19th of January, he has completed the trade. I have been unable to get to the post office during business hours so that I can send his package to the Great White North. The big hits here were some cards from Topps Archives, both 2012 and 2013, especially the Ken Griffey Jr. 1972 Basketball design from 2013 Archives. He also included a Nolan Ryan Colgan's Chips insert from 2013 Panini Cooperstown. In researching it, I found that Ryan has two different Chips in the set, one smiling and one scowling. I wonder if they line up well enough that you could make a .gif of them switching back and forth between Happy Nolan and Mad Nolan?

Next up are a couple of cards of a quarterback with as many playoff victories as Tony Romo. That's right, Tim Tebow. I enjoy reminding the Cowboys fan at my office about that little nugget there. I hope that Romo never wins another playoff game so I can always have that little bit of trivia at my disposal. I can't say that I like the Jets or the Patriots at all, but Tebow did spend some time at each of those places. He may not be a great quarterback and his constant preaching might get a little bothersome, but that stretch of games he started for Denver was a pretty exciting time. I hope he does well in his new job as a college football analyst.

The package included a number of Mariners old and new. Is it just me, or is Alvin Davis wielding a comically large bat?

The football cards included a number of Denver Broncos, who you may have heard are going to be in this year's Super Bowl against the Seattle Seahawks. I like both teams, but I was a Denver fan about a dozen years before I started liking the Seahawks, so I hope Denver can find a way to win it this year. I hope Marshawn Lynch and Russell Wilson have a good game, and I hope that Richard Sherman gets burned on whatever happens to be the key play of the game. His post-game antics after the victory over the 49ers were ridiculous.

Ryan Clady played his college ball for the local Broncos of Boise State University. I am not a BSU fan, although I do have a couple semesters worth of credits at that institution. My loyalties lie with the miserable Vandals of the University of Idaho, so I just pretend the college football season doesn't exist. Knowshon Moreno has had quite a year this year, and Champ Bailey is one of the great long-term Broncos. Jay Cutler probably gets a worse rap than he deserves, but the guy's face just always looks surly and petulant. You can't help but feel like he's a whiner. 

A batch of Houston Rockets added to my collection of cards from my original favorite sports franchise. Tracy McGrady had a lot of promise, but it seemed like the Rockets could never really put everything together in the years that he and Yao Ming anchored the team, and then injuries put an end to that pairing altogether. That Olajuwon in the top row is new to me. I heard a lot of trade rumors surrounding Omer Asik a while back, but it seems like he might stick around. Otis Thorpe was a key member of the Rockets' first Championship team, and Sam Cassell was one of the more visible members of the team during both Championship runs. He also won a title with Boston in 2008, thirteen years after playing on the 1995 Rockets. That's a long spread between titles. I wonder if anyone else has ever won a second title with such a long span in between?

This Team Leaders card gains the honorary vintage title as it is probably the oldest basketball card I own.

The common theme shared by these hockey cards is facial hair. There are a lot of mustaches on display, and one particularly thick beard. I have to admit that I don't know much at all about hockey. I just never got hooked into it like I did the other sports. The cards are visually interesting, though.

I really appreciate the trade. I have a return package all ready to go, and I plan to hit the post office soon to send it.